but it's harder than you think telling dreams from one another
by NinthFeather
Summary: Johann Trinity spends half of his time looking after his younger siblings and the other half bringing about peace in a way that gets him called a mass murderer on the evening news. It's a confusing existence. He makes it work.


_A/N: For Gundam 00 Week 2017 Day 3; the prompt was Trinity. I took the opportunity to finally tackle the Trinity sibs. Like a lot of people in the fandom, I started out hating them, but sir-neep-scooter of tumblr and his dedicated campaign of Michael Trinity appreciation brought me around to a more nuanced appreciation of these guys. Thanks, man, I think I'm better for it._

 _Some possible trigger warnings; see the end-notes for details, please. Also on a less mental-health-related-note—I developed Laguna and the Trinity siblings' politics from the bits of their ideology shown in the show; they are pretty extreme and don't necessarily reflect mine._

 _The title comes from the song "Daniel in the Den" by Bastille which is very obviously inspired by the Biblical Daniel, but if I decontextualize it from that, there are parts of it that very much make me think of the Trinities._

 **but it's harder than you think telling dreams from one another**

Johann Trinity spends half of his time as a combination of parent, older sibling, and dorm mother to the two people who he simultaneously loves most and most often wants to stab. The other half, he spends on missions that Laguna describes as part of an effort to exterminate war, and that the kindest newscasters sometimes deign to only describe as terrorism.

It's a confusing existence. He makes it work.

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They wear their uniforms all the time; they don't really have a choice. All the clothing they have is endless orange-and-white iterations on the same theme. The undercover clothes, such as they are, arrive when they are needed, and disappear when Laguna people take away the latest batch of clothing for dry cleaning. Usually, they're just jean-and-tee-shirt combinations, still identical, the only differences in the sizes and tailoring. Really not all that different than the uniforms.

They did have a hand in designing the things. It shows, not so much in the color scheme, but in the tightness, and in what parts of the body are covered and uncovered. You can tell teenagers were involved in the planning process of these garments.

Johann isn't wholly complaining. They're better than the loose white shifts from the labs, at least.

But when they do go out undercover, Johann sees the way Nena's gaze lingers on fashion magazines. For that matter, he sees her using their internet for fashion websites, sometimes. Sometimes she even gets Michael in on it.

Nena's a big fan of the tightness of her uniform, and the way it shows skin. But it's plain. And it's all she gets to wear.

Johann's not invited to the fashion magazine discussions—he's an _adult_ , he supposes, even though Michael is technically one too. Johann acts more like one, and that precludes him being involved in some of the fun.

But he's still at the base when they happen. He can still hear his little sister sigh, "Look at all the _colors_."

And his little brother mutter, "That coat looks cool, I guess."

At that point, he risks a glance over Michael's shoulder. The coat is baggy and colored a sort of dingy green[CW1] . Johann would never wear it. He supposes that's sort of the point.

If Johann could choose his own wardrobe, he'd wear suits, like the ones Laguna wears. He likes the thought of crisp, clean, tailored lines and glimmering silk at his neck, every stitch a subtle show of power and wealth.

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The news hates them because they are willing to do what the main branch of Celestial Being won't. Apparently "fair and balanced reporting" goes out the window once you attack civilians. Laguna says it's just their burden to bear.

"War isn't just fought with armies," Laguna explains. "You can't have an army without supplies and weapons. And those things are built by civilians. The fact that they aren't the ones killing people with their own two hands doesn't make them any less responsible."

"We're here to cut the scaffolding out from under the militaries, so the main branch has less work to do. That way, Aeolia's plan will succeed even more quickly."

Reporters on the news accuse them of murder; call what they're doing "atrocities" and "unforgiveable." But the people they're attacking started the cycle of violence first. They knew what they were doing when they went to work at weapons manufacturing plants and military bases.

Johann's hands aren't clean. But there's been violence at some of the protests about Celestial Being, and that's as much the fault of news outlets stirring up controversy as it is of Celestial Being.

If there are any innocent people left in the world, they'll be better off once war is eliminated. So will the rest of the guilty ones.

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Johann does most of the cooking, when they have time to cook. It's not often, once they start interventions, but they do get down time occasionally.

He's the only one who's any good at reading a recipe, but his siblings can follow his directions. Well, that's not quite true. They generally follow orders in the field, and they will follow cooking directions if he's chased them down, then threatened to stop cooking, make them eat MREs for dinner instead, and also possibly stab them if they don't.

Once they actually start helping, they're actually helpful. Nena starts fantasizing about the idea of cooking for some future boyfriend, and can't be counted on to remember how long to do anything, but if he needs dough kneaded or anything mixed, she's got more than enough upper body strength to handle the task.

Michael's skill with the knives on his robot, meanwhile, is _utterly_ transferable to kitchen prep work. If he ever juliennes a pepper like that in front of a professional chef, they will start crying and ask for lessons. He can also debone any and all kinds of meat, which is good, because they can't really go to the store, they have to order through an online service.

Which sometimes messes their order up.

The time they got a few boxes of groceries and then had to look up half of what they'd received on the internet was a fun meal. Johann made do, though.

Nena and Michael complained, but they always do. Still, it's a fonder kind of complaining than they do about the MREs.

When it comes to the MREs, they have a chart that goes from "Actually kinda okay" to "Consider feeding to enemies" and Nena dutifully enters every new flavor into it after the three of them have made a determination.

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It never stops terrifying him when his siblings' units take damage in battle. Even minor damage.

The first time he saw it happen, it was just one of Michael's Fangs. He knew Michael was fine, he was utterly certain of it, and yet…

There is little more chilling than the thought of outliving one's younger siblings.

He micromanages more, in battle, after that, and they both notice. Nena even asks what's wrong. Johann doesn't know how to put his choking fear into words that won't impart his own panic to his nigh-fearless younger sibling.

Then, a few fights later, some half-ruined mobile suit gets past Michael's guard to put a blast through the Drei's left leg, and Michael well near razes the rest of the place to the ground by himself before Nena can recover or Johann can help.

After that, Michael's fighting gains an edge of brutality that it never really loses. The two of them close ranks around Nena.

Sometimes, Johann finds himself thinking that it would be better if they didn't have to fight. If Michael didn't need that brutality, if Nena didn't need that protection—or the brutal streak of her own that Johann's trying _hard_ not to notice.

But that's what they're fighting for, isn't it? Once the interventions are over, it'll end. They won't have to fight, and neither will anyone else, ever again.

He just worries, sometimes, about what they'll lose along the way.

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Neatness is a constant problem for them. It's not the kind of logistical problem a person would expect to have around a secret military base, which is probably exactly why they have it.

Well, more accurately, the reason they have it is that one of their team members is a teenager and the other is just a disorganized person by nature. So Nena leaves MRE wrappers lying on control panels and Michael's worn uniforms are constantly in a pile on the floor near the place designated for his laundry.

Johann's area is always meticulously neat. His siblings snicker at him and occasionally move his things around to see if he will notice. He always does.

He, meanwhile, is constantly reminding them to clean. They are of course resistant to this and all other sensible suggestions, because they are themselves.

Michael, in particular, has apparently been roaming the internet and is very proud of himself when he pulls out the phrases, "You're not my gene donor!" and then, "You're not my Laguna!"

Johann wonders what he did to deserve this. Those evening news anchors would probably have an answer, but honestly, he doesn't think so-called mass murder is enough to merit him Michael in a temper.

In the end, it's a war of attrition, really. Michael can deal with a certain amount of clutter, but he starts tripping over things if the floor actually gets covered. And Nena eventually gets grossed out by her own mess if she leaves it long enough.

He isn't sure why they keep arguing, when they know he'll win out in the end, but kid siblings are weird like that.

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In the beginning, Laguna talks to them. He explains what he needs them to do and why it needs to be done, in as much detail as they need, usually through video calls.

Then the videocalls turn into voice messages. The explanations get shorter, less elaborate. Laguna starts cutting off their questions, or leaving before they can ask any.

Pretty soon, the orders come as pre-recorded voice messages, with single-sentence explanations. Then, they are short snippets of text, with choppy phrases like, "making weapons," or "funding war."

Then the text orders stop including explanations at all.

Johann can't tell what scares him more, Laguna's creeping distance or the slow disappearance of the explanations. He wants to believe that Laguna just got too busy to include them, or that he thought they weren't important anymore, not when the targets were falling along a common theme now—mostly military bases and weapons plants.

He wants to believe.

Michael is the one to finally voice it. "Is what we're doing really okay?" he asks, voice too soft for that of a pilot hovering over the smoking husk of a military base.

But he's not just a pilot. He's Johann's little brother, and Johann doesn't know how to answer him.

Laguna was the one who was supposed to have those answers, but he's not giving them anymore.

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There are times when Johann's roles blur. When he has to scold Nena about keeping her bragging to the comms and off of the Drei's speakers. When he has to tell Michael that he's _not_ going to keep track of how many enemy suits he disables so they can compare "scores" at the end of the battle.

And, on the other side, when he has to drop everything in the middle of making dinner, or playing some silly little card game, or watching Michael pretend that he dislikes helping his little sister brush out her hair, because Laguna sent a mission. And _he_ has to be the one to remind his siblings that their first duty is to eliminating war, even though there are times that he wants to tell Laguna to wait five minutes just as much as they do.

It doesn't feel very fair, but there's a greater purpose to all of it. There _has_ to be.

 _A/N: Warnings for terrorism, mass murder, characters treating these things_ extremely _lightly, and some forms of emotional abuse (specifically, controlling the victim's access to certain items, manipulation, and neglect) by someone the characters are at least implied to see as a parental figure._

 _The lack of canonical detail about these guys made this tricky, but I'm hoping I did the Trinity siblings justice._


End file.
